Karen Ibasco crowned Miss Earth 2017 at the extravagant coronation night of Miss Earth 2017 held at Mall of Asia Arena in Pasay, Metro Manila, Philippines. Katherine Espín of Ecuador crowned Karen Ibasco of The Philippines as her successor. She is the third queen to win the coveted title for Philippines in last 4 years being crowned after Jamie Herrell in 2014 and Angelia Ong in 2015. She was part of our Top 20 favourites to win the title.
Karen who is 26 years of age stands tall at 170 cm. Among many talents, she speaks four different languages quiet smoothly namely, Tagalog, English, Mandarin, and Fookien. Karen is a University instructor and never thought she could be a good teacher initially. This Filipina-Chinese beauty grew up in a traditional Chinese background and describes her childhood as a memorable one, with love and support of her family.
She was asked ‘What is the Biggest Enemy/ Enemies Of Mother Earth’ in the famous Question and Answer round of the competition, to which she gave this impressive answer –
“I believe that the real problem in this world is not climate change, the real problem is us because of our ignorance and apathy, what we have to do is to start changing our ways, to start recalibrating our minds, and to start redirecting our steps because together at a global community, our micro efforts will have a macro effects to help save our home, our planet.”
Her court included –
Miss Earth Water 2017 - Juliana Franco (Colombia)
Miss Earth Fire - Lada Akimova (Russia)
Miss Earth Air - Nina Robertson (Australia)
Top 8 finalists also included –
Paweensuda Drouin (Thailand)
Ninoska Vásquez (Venezuela)
Iva Uchytilová (Czech Republic)
Faith Landman (Netherlands)
6 out of Top 8 finalists were in our list of Top 20 favourites.
Remaining Top 16 finalists are Andreia Gibau (USA), Diamond Langi (Tonga), Ermelinda Matos (Angola), Maria Jose Castaneda (Guatemala), Le Thi Ha Thu (Vietnam), Sarah Laura Peyrel (Switzerland), Lela Karagic (Bosnia & Herzegovina), Angele Kossinda (Cameroon).